2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 7C

The Second Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 7C June 23, 2019 Elijah stands on the side of Mount Horeb, with his face wrapped in his mantle to meet the Lord who comes in the sound of sheer silence. And the Lord asks him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” As with all defining moments in life, so much has happened to bring Elijah to this point. “King Ahab of Israel did more to provoke the anger of the Lord the God of Israel than had all the kings of Israel who went before him.” And his wife Jezebel? Well, really her name says it all. Ahab and Jezebel have led the people astray from following God. They have promoted the worship of Baal in Israel, and they have defied Israel’s covenant with her God. So Elijah goes to Ahab and tells him that God will send a drought on the land for 3 years, because Ahab is so bad, so corrupt. Well, Ahab doesn’t like that and he sets out to kill Elijah, but God takes care of Elijah. God finds Elijah a safe place to be and provides him food and water in the midst of a drought. God sends Elijah to a widow and provides them all with a never-ending supply of meal and oil to make bread; God heeds Elijah’s prayer when he prays that God might spare the widow’s son who has died, and God restores the son to life. In the third year of the drought, God sends Elijah back to Ahab. Elijah encounters Ahab’s servant Obadiah, who is a faithful worshipper of God and who tells Elijah that he has worked to save 100 prophets of God when Jezebel went on a recent killing spree and was murdering all the prophets. Elijah asks Obadiah to tell Ahab he wants to see him, but at first Obadiah refuses to do it. He tells Elijah that Ahab has been searching hi and low for him, and because Elijah has been so elusive, Obadiah fears that when he goes to tell Ahab that Elijah is there to see him, when he returns with Ahab, God will have whisked Elijah away to safety and Ahab will kill Obadiah. Elijah assures Obadiah that he wants to speak to Ahab, and when Elijah and Ahab are face to face, Elijah issues a challenge to Ahab. He invites him to assemble all Israel on the top of Mt Carmel along with 450 prophets of Baal. Once they are all assembled, Elijah speaks to the people of Israel and challenges them to choose which god they will worship and serve: Baal or Yahweh. He then brings two bulls for sacrifice, one for the 450 prophets of Baal and one for himself; they prepare the bulls for offering and lay them on the wood, but they put no fire to it. Then each set of prophets is to pray to their god to answer by fire, and that god will prove to be the god of Israel. The people agree to this plan, because Elijah speaks it well and because it promises to be a good show. Elijah lets the prophets of Baal go first, and from morning until noon, they cry out “O Baal, answer us!” But there is no voice, no answer. At noon, Elijah starts to mock them: “Maybe you should yell louder! Surely he’s a god; either he’s meditating, or he’s wandered away or he is on a journey, or perhaps he’s asleep and must be awakened!” They keep going until the time of the oblation, but there is no voice, no answer and no response. Then Elijah takes the stage. He invites the people to come closer to him, repairs the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down, and he makes a trench around it. He puts the wood in order, cuts the bull into pieces and pours water 3 times on the offering so that the water overflows and runs into the trench. Then Elijah calls upon God, the God who has never yet failed him; the God who has repeatedly saved him from assassination from drought and from hunger, and he says, “ O Lord, God of Abraham Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the Lord falls from heaven and consumes the offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, and even the water that was in the trench, and the people fall on their faces and proclaim that God is their only God. Then Elijah commands them to seize the 450 prophets of Baal and has them all killed. After that amazing feat, Elijah tells Ahab to go eat and drink because God is about to end the 3 year drought with some rain, and Elijah goes back up on the mountain and bows himself down upon the earth and puts his face between his knees (from exhaustion or in prayer for rain?). When he comes down, it rains and both Ahab and Elijah head to Jezreel where Ahab has a palace. Elijah has won; the people have proclaimed that God is their God, and Ahab is no longer trying to kill Elijah. But when they get to Jezreel, Ahab tells Jezebel all that has happened, and Jezebel vows that she will see Elijah dead within the next 24 hours. At this point, Elijah’s nerve fails, and he flees into the wilderness, running as far south in the promised land as he possibly can. It should be his finest hour. He has done what God asked him to do, turning the hearts of the people back to God, and he has accomplished it through some pretty decent showmanship on his part and some really cool pyrotechnics on God’s part. At this point, he should be feeling like the superhero of all prophets, but something in him fails, and he goes out into the wilderness and prays to die. Even then, even there, God sends angels with food and water, and they take care of Elijah, and they send him to Mount Horeb (which is the Mount Sinai where Moses received the 10 commandments from God) so that Elijah can meet with God. Elijah spends the night in a cave on Mt Horeb, and then God asks him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And Elijah, like many prophets before and after him, speaks his peace to God saying: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.” So God tells Elijah to go stand outside the cave on the side of the mountain before the Lord. First comes the wind, but God is not in the wind. Then comes the earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake. Then comes the fire (which God had just used to defeat the 450 prophets of Baal), but God is not in the fire, and then a sound of sheer silence. That’s when Elijah knows God is there, and he wraps his face in his mantle and goes out to stand before the God of Israel. And God says again to Elijah, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (Why does God ask him again? Is God giving him a chance to change his story or rethink his answer? I know sometimes when I don’t like the way my children answer a question the first time, sometimes I’ll ask it again to see if they’ll give me a different answer…) And Elijah says again: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.” (Which is a bit of an exaggeration, because remember Obadiah and the 100 prophets of Yahweh he saved…) As God has always done in this relationship, God listens to Elijah and tells him, “Get back to work.” Here’s our new plan: no more pyrotechnics. You are going to anoint your successor and anoint new kings for Israel and Aram, these two whom I have named. And God will continue God’s work of salvation for Israel in a new and different way. In Elijah’s story is good news for us as well. Elijah, the superhero prophet, who escapes death on multiple occasions and orchestrates a marvelous and show-stopping defeat of God’s enemies, has a crisis of faith in Jezreel right on the heels of his most marvelous victory. First, he is erroneously focused on being the only prophet of God left in the whole world, and he overestimates his importance in the overall scheme of God’s salvation of Israel. Second, he loses faith in God’s providence. God has taken care of him every step of the way; God has done everything that Elijah has asked of God, but in Jezreel, Elijah loses his nerve, he loses his faith. In spite of all this, God still takes care of Elijah. God still listens to Elijah and answers Elijah. God even issues a new call to Elijah for how Elijah can continue to be a part of God’s new plan for the salvation of Israel. God promises Elijah that there is a future for Elijah after the cave, when Elijah has said, It is enough. I can’t do this anymore. And God promises that there is a future for Israel through the abundance of God’s grace which makes the impossible possible and which is unceasing, untiring, unrelenting. This is good news for us, who are not super-hero prophets. We too feel the effects of life beating us down. We too grow weary of following God’s call for us. We too are tempted to believe that we are all alone in facing whatever we are dealing with, we are the only ones who can do a certain thing; we are the only ones who are left. We too lose our nerve and run for it. We too come to a point in our lives when we say, “It is enough, God! I don’t want to do this anymore!” And God who is always faithful, always providing, always listening and willing to answer, reminds us that we are not the center of the universe and only a small piece of God’s plan of salvation, and then God issues a new call to us, a new way to participate in salvation and in God’s work in the world. Your invitation this week is to listen for God in the silence. The rest and be still and be renewed in the presence of the God who loves you and who is always faithful.

The 1st Sunday after Pentecost-Trinity Sunday Year C

The First Sunday after Pentecost-Trinity Sunday Year C June 16, 2019 This past week, I read an article on NPR in their series American Anthem, “a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action.” I don’t normally follow this series, but I was caught by a headline above the link on social media. The featured song is called “Dancing on my Own” by an artist named Robyn, and the headline that caught my eye read: “The magic of Robyn’s millennial anthem is its bait and switch: It’s a fun, energetic dance song about being lonely and heartbroken. And yet, the minute you hear it, you instantly feel less alone.” Interesting. So I read the article, and it was chock full of stories of people who loved this song. “There were the DJs who spin it at wedding receptions, knowing it will get everyone on the floor. People who have played it for hours in one sitting, or kept it on repeat for a road trip hundreds of miles long, or made it the last dance at every house party they've ever thrown… The ones who have used it to get through not just breakups, but cancer, or death, or a lot more, who love that decadent drum fill toward the end more than life.”i The writer continues: “All stories of juxtaposition. People finding community in a song all about being solo.” After I finished reading the article, I listened to the song, and I thought, “meh.” “Doesn’t really do it for me (but then again, I’m not a millennial!).” But, an hour later, I caught myself singing the chorus, and I thought about the paradox of all those people mentioned in the article who have felt in community with others over a song about dancing alone! On this first Sunday after Pentecost, our tradition and our readings point us to the remembrance of the Trinity. The whole notion of the Trinity is one of paradox—the three in one and the one in three; one substance and three persons. It’s about God who is both alone in eminence but also in relationship. The early church even had an understanding of the relationship of Trinity that they called in Greek “perichoresis.” This means “to dance,” and it implies an intimate relationship. Our reading from Romans today is also made up of paradox. In the portion of Romans for today, Paul is writing to the Christian community in Rome about justification. And he talks about how we as Christians boast in the hope of sharing the glory of God, but he doesn’t stop there. He continues “that we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…” There are actually two paradoxes here. The first paradox is that in Paul’s world, a good Jew would never boast about suffering because they believed that suffering was proof of one’s unrighteousness; that suffering was actually punishment for one’s sins from God. Paul is actually debunking this theology, and he is embracing a new theology of the cross of Christ (which ultimately represents suffering unto death) as the way of life. The second paradox is the obvious one: that bad things which produce suffering in us, through a chain reaction of producing endurance and then character ultimately produce hope. Sometimes in our suffering, we actually draw closer to, more dependent upon God, and through this process, hope grows out of suffering. There’s also a hope that can grow out of our vulnerability (which can also be a product of suffering if done well). I read an article about vulnerability this past week also. I was reminded of what sociologist Brene Brown has to say about vulnerability: [that] “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experience.” Also in this article, the Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr, talks about how engaging vulnerability can require deliberate practice. This is yet another paradox: most of us, even though we come into this world as acutely vulnerable beings spend our lives trying to become less vulnerable instead of more vulnerable. In the article, Rohr talks about how he practices vulnerability “praying for ‘one good humiliation a day’ to challenge his ego. It might come in the form of not getting his way, or having someone disagree with him. Then, he carefully watches how his mind and body respond. [He says,] ‘My inner reaction — I’m not proud to tell you — is defensive; is, ‘That’s not true. You don’t understand me.’ I can just see how well-defended my ego is,” he says. “And of course, even your critics — and I have plenty of them — at least 10 to 20 percent of what they’re saying is usually true’.” The article continues, “Rohr’s practice of opening himself to humiliation is difficult, but the alternative may close us off to what’s at the heart of being human. As [poet] David Whyte writes, “To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others.”ii And so we’ve come full circle. Suffering and vulnerability are actually what help increase true and authentic relationships. This same vulnerability is at the heart of the Trinity, which is above everything, about relationships. So, for your invitation this week. It would be really easy to invite you to take on Richard Rohr’s practice to “pray for ‘one good humiliation a day,’ but I try not to invite you to do anything that I am unwilling to do myself, and I’ll confess that I think this is beyond my level of spiritual maturity. For those of you who are ready to dive into a PhD level class on vulnerability, then you are certainly welcome to try to take on his practice. For the rest of us, your invitation is to pay attention to how you act or react in times when you are vulnerable, in times when you are suffering. Pay attention to times when you see other people vulnerable or suffering as well and lean into those moments as opposed to leaning away from them. “As Rohr says, ‘Vulnerability transforms you. You can’t be in the presence of a truly vulnerable, honestly vulnerable person and not be affected. I think that’s the way we are meant to be in the presence of one another’.” i.https://www.npr.org/2019/06/10/730641583/robyn-dancing-on-my-own-alone-together-american-anthem?utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=npr ii.The Pause Newsletter from the On Being project June 15, 2019. https://onbeing.org/

Pentecost Year C

Pentecost—Year C June 9, 2019 Years ago, I read somewhere that there is a Jewish story about creation that says that God breathed out and created all that there is, and then God breathed in and retreated from creation, removing Godself from what God had created. When I first heard this, I was very disturbed to think about God retreating from creation, but since then, I’ve come to understand that perhaps the crafters of the story were trying to show that God poured out God’s being, God’s abundance, God’s creativity, God’s joy upon creation and then God stepped back so that we could do with it what we would will. God breathes out and creates; God breathes in and grants freedom. Today is the feast day of Pentecost, when we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. In Acts we see the gift of the Spirit, the breath of God, which comes upon the gathered community in a most ordinary moment in the extraordinary force of something like both wind and flame. God breathes out God’s Spirit upon them and that inspires in them unity despite ethnic differences when all testify to the power of God and the good news of the resurrected Christ. In our story in Acts, God breathes out God’s Spirit upon the gathered believers, and Peter testifies to the crowd that gathers and looks upon them in both derision and wonder. After Peter shares with them the good news of God’s presence in the world through Jesus, the onlookers ask: “What then should we do?” Peter tells them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call." God breathes out and creates; God breathes in and grants them freedom. About three thousand respond to the gift of the breath of God that day and join the ranks of the believers. Once captivated by the breath of God in God’s great exhalation at Pentecost, the followers of Jesus Christ live their lives within the rhythm of God’s breath: God exhales and creates meaning and purpose; God inhales and grants them space and freedom to respond how they will. The story of Pentecost concludes with the following choice made by the believers in the freedom of God’s Spirit: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” God breathed out and created their community; God breathed in and granted them freedom to respond in how they chose to live together. And they chose communion, gratitude, and generosity. So it is with us. In so many ways, God breathes creativity out into our lives, and then God breathes in so that we may have the freedom to respond to the breath of God in our lives and in our world. God breathes out and it is a gentle, cooling breeze to our beleaguered souls and bodies. How will we respond? God breathes out and it is fire and wind that purge and refine us, making our impurities pure. How will we respond? God breathes out and it is a brush of air that tickles us and plays with us, stealing something and making us chase it, and inviting us to laugh at our folly. How will we respond? God breathes out, and we discover that God is breathing for us, filling our hearts and lungs with life when we have lost our own breath. How will we respond? God breathes out, and it is the stillness of the wilderness with no whisper of wind stirring, when we are desperate for a brush of wind or breath to give us respite and relief from the sun beating down upon us in the wilderness. How will we respond? God breathes out and it is the sweet breath of a new baby, the cool brush of a mother’s lips on a feverish forehead, the sweetness of a lover’s mouth poised for a kiss. How will we respond? God breathes out, and it is the violent wind of a storm that can fell mighty oaks, and it is a light breeze that allows a bumblebee to drift lazily along. How will we respond? God breathes out and it is a bunch of red balloons tied to the wrists of children and sent out into the world as our model and our witness. How will we respond? The breath of God has brought us, through various ways, to this place, to this community, and then it blows us back out into the world to share the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and what that continues to mean for our lives. How will we respond?

Easter 6C

6th Sunday of Easter May 26, 2019 Our gospel readings for the last few weeks in John’s gospel have taken us back in time to before Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. Last Sunday, we saw Judas leaving the Upper Room gathering with the other disciples to go out and betray Jesus. And this Sunday, we see the remaining disciples growing increasingly more anxious, and several of them are posing questions to Jesus to try to understand his mysterious words about leaving them soon. This section of John’s gospel is made up of four whole chapters that are known as John’s farewell discourse—four chapters where Jesus is reassuring and comforting and teaching his disciples, trying to prepare them for what is next. Liturgically, this week, we are moving toward the end of the Easter season. This Thursday is the feast day of the Ascension when we celebrate Jesus’s ascension into heaven (it’s 1 of 7 of our major feast days in the church). Two weeks from today, we’ll have the feast of Pentecost, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. And next Sunday is this weird, in-between time, when Jesus has ascended but the Holy Spirit hasn’t shown up yet. But for today, Jesus is promising his disciples and us that the Holy Spirit is coming, and he offers them and us the gift of his peace saying, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” I’ve been thinking about peace this week. Often when we use the word peace, we mean an absence of conflict or even a “Peaceful easy feeling” (like we sang coming in at 10). But the word that Jesus uses—shalom—is a much more complex word. It means beyond peace to completeness or wholeness, and even such completeness or wholeness that causes one to act or respond with generosity. The thing about Jesus’s peace is that it is a gift which is freely given by him but cannot be earned or attained by us. Peace is something that we can only receive. And sometimes we refuse to receive it, don’t we? One member of our Wednesday service congregation, when we were talking about this, shared a story of a lady in her church who resisted the institution of the passing of the peace in the “new” prayer book and she would just stand there with her arms crossed as people exchanged the peace around her. So we can resist this gift of peace, this gift of wholeness. But we can also be conduits of Jesus’s peace for one another. Another one of our Wednesday congregation shared that she had recently been using a spiritual practice called “a meditation for loving kindness.” In this practice, you pray the following things for yourself and for other people, praying them three times each. 1. May you be happy. 2. May you be healthy. 3. May you be at peace. Consider starting this practice just for yourself, that you may be open to receive Jesus’s gift of peace, Jesus’s gift of wholeness. Then deepen the practice to include those for whom it is easy for you to love. Pray this three-prayer for each of them three times. Then, we you are ready for the advanced class, add in doing this for a person you are at odds with—maybe someone who has wounded you, someone with whom you disagree. This week, your invitation is two part. First, pay attention to the ways that you resist the gift of Jesus’s peace or wholeness in your life. When you catch yourself in those moments, consider uncrossing your arms and asking for help receiving it. Then second, look for ways to pass that gift of peace or wholeness on to others. There are countless ways of doing this in every single day, but if you are looking for a place to start, consider using the meditation for loving kindness: 1. May you be happy. 2. May you be healthy. 3. May you be at peace.

Easter 5C

The 5th Sunday of Easter Year C May 19, 2019 This past week, I was spending some time preparing for our upcoming move by going through a bunch of our stuff that has been stored in our garage for the last two years. In and among untold numbers of books that have been hidden away in boxes, I re-discovered one in particular of which I am quite fond. It’s title is Being Dead is No Excuse (and if that isn’t intriguing enough, the subtitle is): The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral. The book was written by Episcopalians and natives of the Mississippi Delta—Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays. The book is full of recipes and anecdotes about funerals and characters from the authors’ small town of Greenville, Mississippi. And the emphasis throughout the book is on how food can both unite and divide the community. While chapter one signifies the unifying force of good funeral food (it is titled: “Dying tastefully in the MS Delta” and concludes with a top ten list of funeral foods), chapter 2 captures the division that can be created by different visions of what is appropriate in good funeral food. It is titled “the Methodist ladies vs. the Episcopal ladies.” The opinionated, Episcopal authors have this to say about the local Methodists’ funeral food: “Though a number of old planter families still hew to the religion of the Wesley brothers, and there is certainly no spiritual or theological animosity, the culinary competition between the Episcopal ladies and the Methodist ladies is cut-throat. Episcopalians are snooty because they spurn cake mixes and canned goods, without which there would be no such thing as Methodist cuisine. Methodist ladies do great things with the contents of cans and boxes. If a survey were done of the winners of Pillsbury Bake-Offs, ten to one the majority would be Methodists. The casserole is the most characteristically Methodist foodstuff…The Methodist culinary genius might be summed up this way: “Now you’re cookin’ with Campbell’s. (See also [Chapter 5] “Comfort Foods: There is a Balm in Campbell’s Soup p. 141.)”i Our Acts reading for today gives us one of the most pivotal moments in the early Christian movement, when Peter has a vision where the voice of God tells him that he no longer needs to worry about being bound by the Jewish dietary laws that he has followed all his life. In our reading for today, we have the second telling of this same story, which happens when Peter has returned to Jerusalem and is justifying his actions of eating with Gentiles to the other Jewish followers of Jesus. Food has been the number one thing that this early church has been fighting over, namely the question of whether the Gentile converts to Christianity have to convert to Judaism and follow the dietary laws. Because of this vision given to Peter by God, Peter becomes converted in his thinking and in his response, and we see that he recognizes that he does not want to stand in the way of the work that God is doing. “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Luke tells us of Peter’s critics, “When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’” Food which has divided this community since its very beginnings, is now no longer an impediment to belonging and to following Jesus. Over the last few months, the Church Development Institute (CDI) team from St. Thomas (that is me, Tracy Edgar, Mary Haley, and Rick Lantz) along with the vestry have conducted interviews of various parishioners about the gifts and challenges of St. Thomas. Folks were pretty much unanimous in their assessment that one of our strongest gifts is hospitality—how we use food (and drink!) to create community and welcome others. One of the greatest challenges that folks have generally articulated is the desire for us to attract new members. As a part of our work with CDI, we are supposed to plan and implement a project over this summer. After looking at the responses to the interviews, we began trying to figure out how to capitalize on our gift for hospitality in order to attract new visitors to our congregation. We had a number of different ideas, but through various conversations, we have begun working more intensively on a particular idea. It is a project called “CAST” which is short for Co-op At St. Thomas. Our vision is to create a gathering place for our community of Isle of Hope and beyond on our church grounds once a month beginning in September and running on a trial period through December. We plan to begin reaching out to local vendors from other farmers’ markets, local artists, food trucks, musicians, a local pet-grooming truck, the people who catch and sell shrimp and crabs, anyone we can think of who could help us create this festival on the first Friday night of the month from 4 pm to 8 pm. We also want to have a featured charity who we would promote and who would help us promote the event and who we could raise money for that month. We’ve also talked about having activities for children centered around our newly re-vitalized playground. We have a vision of creating a community gathering space for people to bike, walk, golf-cart, or drive over, shop and picnic on our grounds listening to live music and enjoying each other and our beautiful home. All this would be centered around locally grown, caught, or cooked food--Food as a way to unite us here in Isle of Hope. We would also look to have some soft advertising for the different things going on here at St. Thomas as a possible bridge for folks who might be interested in joining us for worship or other events. I want you to be thinking about the following questions. We’ll be collecting feedback from you in the comings days about this idea of CAST—Co-op At St. Thomas. Here are the questions I want you to be considering: What do you think? Do you have any ideas/suggestions about this? What are your concerns? Would you like to help with this endeavor? How might God be calling us to expand our vision of how we use our gift of hospitality to promote unity and community? i. Metcalf, Gayden and Hays, Charlotte. Being Dead Is No Excuse: The official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral. Miramax: New York, 2005, p 34.

Easter 4C 2019

Easter 4C 2019 May 12, 2019 I am struck this morning by the story from Acts. There are all sorts of interesting details in this story not the least of which is the transformation of Peter from total failure to a hero who rivals the prophets of old in his ability to resurrect someone. But the story isn’t so much a story about Peter; instead, it is a story about the church; it gives us a wonderful picture of a worshipping community in the early church which is also a community that expects, even demands resurrection, and it shows us some characteristics that we can try to emulate as we try to grow more deeply into how God is calling us to be a resurrection community, a community that expects, demands, and works for resurrection in this particular time and place. The writer of Acts (who is also the writer of Luke’s gospel), tells us that in the particular place of Joppa, there lived a disciple whose name was Tabitha. She was well known for being devoted to good works and acts of charity. She is the only woman in all of scripture who is named as a disciple, and she is particularly well known for her ministry to widows, some of the most vulnerable of the population of the Roman Empire and in Jewish culture. Tabitha is known for making clothing for widows; when she becomes ill and dies, the disciples send for Peter, whom they know to be in a near-by city. This part, in and of itself is incredibly remarkable. She is dead! What is it that they expect Peter to do? Well, clearly they expect Peter to bring Tabitha back from the dead, otherwise, why else would they call him? Peter comes quickly, and they tell him the stories of Tabitha and the ways that she has made a difference in their lives and in their community. He puts them all outside, prays, and then says to her, “Tabitha, get up.” And she does! Peter takes her out and shows her to the rest of them, and the news of what has happened spreads throughout Joppa, and many come to believe in the Lord. And Peter stays with them there for some time. But how does all this relate to us? We see disease and brokenness all around us and within us. The recent school shooting in Colorado (just one in a string of far too many—the shooting at the synagogue, the bombing in Sri Lanka on Easter) these are further evidence of the relentless insinuation of evil and destruction in our lives and our world. What is modeled for us in this story of life in the early church is that, as a community who expects, demands, and works for resurrection, we must first be dedicated to being a community of healing; we must first be dedicated to be a community of hope. We must be unafraid to ask for healing and resurrection for ourselves, for each other, and for the whole world. We also cannot be content to let disease, unhealthy patterns of life, and death run unchecked among us. Another thing that strikes me about this story and how the community at Joppa functions as a community that expects, demands, and works for resurrection is the reciprocity that is involved in the community and the mutual care that is offered there. Tabitha is known for being devoted to good works and acts of charity; she takes care of vulnerable people within her community probably from her own resources. When she becomes ill and dies, the community takes care of her, washing her body, calling for Peter and physically going to get him. They care for her as they mourn her loss. In this picture of health and life in the early church, all are both giving and receiving, and the health of this faith community spills out into the greater community as evidence of the power of Jesus Christ to heal and resurrect. So, your invitation this week is two-fold. First, ask yourself if you are participating in the full reciprocity of what it means to be this church, this resurrection community. Are you giving more than you are receiving? Are you receiving more than you are giving? Do you feel that you are not being nourished? If so, could that be because you are only receiving and not giving? Do you feel tired, burned out? If so, could that be because you are only giving and not receiving? What balance might God be calling you to find between these two extremes? One way to be intentional in seeking this balance is to allow someone to do something for you, whenever you can, and to try to do something for someone else at least once a day. Second, spend some time listing to God in your life every day, and then let your life be a prayer, a response to what God is speaking in your life. Ask God for health, wholeness, healing, and resurrection in your life. Ask God for health, wholeness, healing, and resurrection in this church. Ask God for health, wholeness, healing, and resurrection in our world.

The Third Sunday of Easter Year C

The Third Sunday of Easter Year C May 5, 2019 This past week, our speaker at Spring Clergy Conference was Dr. Catherine Meeks who is the Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing in Atlanta. (Let me just say that I’ve gone to 15 years of clergy conferences, and Dr. Meeks, was by-far the best speaker I have heard. She has such a gracious presence, is clearly very comfortable in her own skin, and has a way of sharing her story and other truths in a way that is both matter of fact and gently joyful.) Dr. Meeks’ time and work with us was divided between watching documentaries (one of which revealed to me a part of our American history that I had been completely ignorant about), conversations about what next steps we might take in our congregations, and her emphasis on the notion that racial healing in our Church begins with our own inner work and awareness. She began our conversation together by referencing the story of Jesus’ healing of the man at the pool of Bethsaida, when Jesus first asked the man, “Do you want to be healed?” She reminded us that “we as Christians believe in healing and transformation. We believe that Jesus brings those about. It is up to us to set ourselves on the road.” I am still processing all of what she said and what we all shared, and I don’t have any ideas about what my next steps here are in light of all this, but we have certainly already begun this conversation in our Just Mercy book study, and through that, I am thankful that we have already begun this work of racial healing here together. But what I was struck by is her image of healing and transformation which is given by Jesus and of our own responsibility to set ourselves on the road in light of our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today. We see Saul, who has made a name for himself by persecuting people of the Way, the followers of Jesus. We have already seen the young Saul earlier in Acts as he stood by and held the coats of the people who stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Our reading for today shows Saul on the road to Damascus when he is blinded by a light from heaven and hears a voice asking him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” It’s interesting to me that Saul never answers the Lord’s question. Instead, he responds with a question: “Who are you, Lord?” And the Lord replies: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." The story goes on that those who are with Saul hear the Lord’s voice but do not see anything. Saul follows the Lord’s instructions, going into the city where he is blind and doesn’t eat anything for three day. Finally, he is visited by Annais, who the Risen Christ has sent (after having to do some convincing). And through Annais faithfulness and work on behalf of the Risen Christ, Saul is healed and transformed, and he begins to testify about his conversion. But still I can’t help but wonder, why is Saul persecuting Jesus and his followers? What is it that is going on inside him that makes him think that is what he needs to be doing? Most of us don’t naturally identify with Saul, I would guess. It’s not a very flattering picture of humanity, and yet it is one in which we all share. Each one of us is capable of being a Saul, persecuting others, and if we are truthful, we have all done this in much smaller, yet still destructive ways. I think back on the times when I have persecuted someone else—making someone else feel like they are an outsider, engaging in gossip about someone, thinking uncharitable thoughts about someone, judging someone. All of these are micro-aggressions or precursors to persecution that come out of a place of insecurity or dis-ease in my own soul. We persecute others, I think, when we are afraid that we are going to lose something that we think belongs to us or is owed to us. Your invitation this week is to pay attention to the goings on in your soul, especially when those goings on involve persecuting someone else or even the precursor to persecution, when you are feeling insecure or uneasy or you are afraid. When you catch yourself in that moment or in reflecting after, ask God for forgiveness and healing, and rest in the assurance that both you and the one you have harmed are both beloved of God who are loved beyond what you could ever ask for or imagine. “We, as Christians, believe in healing and transformation. We believe that Jesus brings those about. It is up to us to set ourselves on the road.”